La Cocinera Sin Fronteras
The Chef Without Borders or How The Pirates Learned To Cook
Purpose
Artitza Barrutia wanted to unite the culinary traditions of Elcadaver in a single volume, so that a dirt farmer in Maozinha can sample the dishes of Inkazimulo royalty, or a Okiashan Emperor might taste the simple fare of an Izquierdana slave.
Document Structure
Clauses
Barrutia's skill in the kitchen was matched only by her skill with inks. On every page is a new recipe and a work of art. Her handwriting set the standard in at least three countries and her illustrations of the dishes were recommended for art galleries.
Legal status
Since every nation is represented in the book, every nation has tried to make a claim on ownership. Brazos proclaims the Cocinera as national treasure, produced by a daughter of their land. Inkazimulo claims that recipes Barrutia received from the Queen's personal chef are state secrets and demands the book be returned. The Emperor of Okiashi has proposed a system where each nation enjoys the book for a year at a time before passing it on. While no wars have officially been fought over the book, the question of it's ownership has wormed its way into several peace treaties.
The Jetsam Council would like to remind all of them, that possession is nine tenths of the law.
Historical Details
Background
Artitza Barrutia was a woman with a dream. From her humble origins in Elombre, her skills in the kitchen had seen her appointed as the Queen's personal chef. From this lofty height, she met diplomats from every corner of Elcadaver. From them, she began to understand that there was a wide open world of food that she had never dreamed of. New tastes, new smells, she didn't just want to experience them, she needed to.
So she packed her bags and left. West to Manziho, where she completed her chapter on Brazo cuisine. Then south, to what was still Aslihat Qawia, where she not only rubbed shoulders with the caliph's kitchen, but was the first to put traditional Iquierdana dishes on paper. She followed the sweep of the peninsula until she stood in the remnants of Kardia's old capital, where those old traditions still hold strongest. From there, she zig-zagged across the Sternum Channel, to Vraecur, Brust, Coasta, Agterlywe and Laerug.
By the time she reached Inkazimulo her journey was known far and wide, and cooks from every corner of that great empire poured into the capital to meet her. The feast, now known as Barrutia Night, has gone down in history as the moment the empire ceased to be a series of subjugated states and the people began to forge a new, united identity. She left the city in high spirits and traveled up through Taang until she reached Vae. She caught a ship south to Okiashi and Song-aji. Her good luck finally ran out in Kakiatas.
It was a dinner with the Ratu, Pertiwi. She asked Barrutia if she could see her work thus far. Being the gracious guest that she was, she agreed. As Pertiwi flipped through the pages, Barrutia talked about her dreams for the book, how she would use the recently invented printing press to mass produce copies cheap enough for anyone to afford. She was saying how it would bring Elcadaver together over the dinner table, she heard, "No." Ratu Pertiwi was holding the book before her with rapture in her eyes. This was a work of art, mass producing it for the common rabble... No, they couldn't appreciate it. Barrutia protested, it was a cookbook. The only people who had any use for it were the common rabble. Pertiwi shook her head, Barrutia would be rewarded generously for her work, but the book was going in a glass case in the royal art gallery.
Reports differ on what happened next. Some say Barrutia simply tried to grab the book. Others that she did grab the book and was headed for the door before the guards tackled her. Those that knew her best say she would have tried to stab the queen with her fork while screaming expletives. However it happened, Barrutia spent the next three years in a Kakiatas dungeon. But she was the world's most famous chef, and she didn't just cook desserts. Somehow, she got ahold of all the ingredients to something called "Inzintambo Thunder". They found pieces of her cell door embedded in a stone wall two cells away. They didn't find her though. And soon they realized, they couldn't find the book either.
Barrutia resurfaced in Okiashi. Her time in the dungeons had not been kind to her. She contracted a wasting disease, had lost some one hundred and fifty pounds, and was near death. She placed the book before the emperor, begged him to see it published, and then asked to retire to his kitchen. There, for her final meal, she made arroz y frijoles, just the way her uncle used to. Artitza Barrutia passed on that very evening, her plate licked clean.
History
Unfortunately, the emperor was of the same mind as the ratu. He ignored Barrutia's final wishes and placed the book in his own private library, only allowing his personal cooks access. He and his descendants held on it for several generations, until a disastrous war with Taang. Among other humiliating terms, the peace treaty stated that La Cocinera must be handed over.
The Taang High King least believed in sharing the book, placing it on display in the national art gallery. Unfortunately, The High King was far more interested in showing his dominance over his enemy than the actual contents. The display was centered on the book's cover, designed by a famous Okiashi artist. La Cocinera sat, unopened, unread, unused for twenty-three years.
Then along came a thief. Nameless and brazen, she simple walked up to the book and walked away with it. The guards were so stunned that they accidentally gave her a head start before sounding the alarm. The ensuing chase was a grand tour of Ghutanon, eventually involving the entire garrison, several fruit carts, and one donkey with diarrhea. It ended with the thief sailing away on a fast ship, waving her hat to the dismal guards and telling them they'd find her in Vraecur. War was probably only averted by shear embarrassment. The High King would later claim he had simply gifted the book to Vraecuran counterpart.
And to the Vraecurrian King's private library La Cocinera would go. And it would stay there for the next fifty years, giving the King's court a reputation that would eventually spread to the rest of the country. Vraecurrian's strong culinary tradition evolved from his chefs experimenting and improving the recipes found in the book, with each chef jealously guarding their own personal recipes like a wizard's grimoire. La Cocinera would eventually leave Vraecur during the reign of His Royal Majesty, Romeo the Fourth. The legendary lover promised his first wife the world. When she found out about his long list of paramours, she took his shit instead. After loading up half the country's treasury and most of its treasures (including La Cocinera) onto a ship, she went back home to her father in Kardia.
Her father happened to have been appointed Culture Minister by the Kardian senate and he promptly set about enhancing the People's Museum. for the first time in it's history, the actual contents of La Cocinera were open to the public. Well, two pages were. The book was opened to the recipes for olive fish and vineyard steak, traditional Kardian dishes. Visitors praised Barrutia's brilliant use of colored waxes to create such live like depictions. The recipes themselves were largely uncommented on, being written in Brazosol.
Years later, in order to finance their civil war, the Kardian senate began to auction off their national treasures. The King of Brazos purchased the book for an undisclosed sum. He sent his steward, the head of his bodyguard, and his personal chef on a state-of-the-art warship to retrieve it. Finally, after circumnavigating the world and two hundred years, La Cocinera Sin Fronteras was coming home.
Until it ran into L'amiral's infamous raid. The pirate boarded after a brutally short fight, relieved them of the cargo, and sent all of them to the bottom of the sea. It seemed that Barrutia's dream had finally come to an ignoble end, at the hands of an illiterate pirate.
But something funny happened. L'amiral had gotten a hold of a printing press. And the first thing they did with it, was distribute their fancy new book to the fleet. As the ships split up after the raid, copies started popping up across the pirates safe havens. As people from across the world poured into the new frontier, a recipe book containing recipes from across the world spread like wildfire. It became standard issue for every pirate galley. Crews bonded over the dinner table, sharing meals the cooks never would have dreamed of on their own.
So maybe the plates were tin instead of silver. Maybe the tables rocked more than she imagined. And maybe, just maybe, the table manners were lacking, when they weren't simply non-existent. But Artitza Barrutia could finally rest easy, now that the world had come together over the dinner table. And the plates are always licked clean.
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